Vanishing Trick

'Tiny adjustments, large effects. One faint touch is the doorway to great spaces in an imagination where human beings are distant planets emitting warmth and light. Sue Butler's is a world of apprehensions, not unlike Chekhov's. On the one hand,delicacy and desire, on the other, wild grass.’ – George Szirtes

Sue Butler has travelled much in Russia and many of the poems in this book relate to her experiences there. But this book does not fall into the trap of ‘holiday poems’, like dull photos or slides: the equivalent of ‘this is me in Red Square’.

She has an intimate knowledge of the country, its people and their language. Shehones in on details of the people she writes about, so that the reader ends up knowingthem as friends, or indeed as enemies.

These are poems of lived experience, focusing on particularities – startling,moving, beautiful.